Should Rich Kids Be Grounded From Social Networking?

This week, amid reports that $15.9 billion man Michael Dell had daughter Alexa Dell’s Twitter account deactivated over security distress, I’m grappling with my own concern: should the very privileged rich be barred from social networking for their own good?

Because the hashtag #RKOI (rich kids of instagram, for the uninitiated) is making me feel murderous.

Still, it’s easy to see why Dell (or his security team, who he’s rumored to pay $2.7 million annually for protection services) might have been less than thrilled about 17-year-old Alexa’s prolific use of Twitter.

The 17-year-old posted check-ins complete with GPS info, statuses detailing her family’s whereabouts (she posted an invitation to her high school graduation dinner complete with time, data and location according to Bloomberg Businessweek) and photos of her exploits on the family jet (“En route to Fiji” she recently tagged a photo of her brother Zach on Instagram, a photo that surfaced on the Tumblr blog “Rich Kids of Instagram” but has since been deleted).

McAfee online security expert Robert Siciliano says social media and high-profile individuals are a recipe for disaster—especially when it comes to teenagers. “Kids today don’t understand the repercussions of posting their whereabouts,” he says. But it wasn’t so long ago that another high-profile individual found herself a victim of a burglary that she could have stopped—if she could only have curbed her Twitter habit.

When Paris Hilton was burglarized a few years ago (by the now notorious “Bling Ring”), she was in the habit of posting status updates detailing her every move—when she went on a coffee run, partying for the night, and even when she bought new expensive handbags, Siciliano says. “Not surprisingly, people were keeping tabs on her through those posting and eventually broke into her house. They knew where she was, how long she’d be gone and, perhaps most importantly, exactly what they were looking to steal.”

But Alexa’s problem wasn’t so much her flashiness as her alerting the world to her (very wealthy) family’s every move. According to regulatory filings, her father, PC magnate Michael Dell spends more than $2.7 million on personal and home security for his family. His daughter’s Twitter habit could undo the work of his security team in real time.

“This is personal security 101,” Siciliano says. In the ranks of the 99% it’s common knowledge that leaving an outgoing message on your answering machine telling friends you’re away for the week is a personal safety risk because, as he points out, “It’s just as risky to let people know where you are as it is where you’re not going to be.” Similar wisdom leads us to ask a neighbor to grab our newspapers when they’re piling up on our doorstep. “Even telling your cab driver on the way to the airport that you’re going to Mexico for the week is a bad idea,” he says. “Because now you’ve got some guy who knows exactly where you live and how long you’ll be gone, which could spell bad news.”